After impassioned and at times lofty rhetoric from both sides in the day-long duel of closing arguments the jury will soon decide the federal corruption case against Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo.

Both sides argued most points of the case and even brought out several new ones, including a lawsuit settlement that brought Bencivengo tens of thousands of dollars weeks after accepting $7,400 from the government’s cooperating witness, Marliese Ljuba last July. The evidence went to the core of defense attorney Jerome Ballarotto’s argument that Bencivengo accepted a loan, not a bribe, totaling $12,400 from Ljuba.

“It’s been suggested to you (the jury) that Mrs. Ljuba is the puppetmaster; where she is pulling the strings of the mayor and everyone else in town,” said Assistant US Attorney Dustin Chao in his rebuttal argument. “He’s sitting on $24,000, not using a dime to pay property or income taxes. Who is manipulating who?”

Shortly after Chao finished, the jury broke deliberations until this morning. They’ll have to decide whether the embattled mayor of Hamilton is guilty of the five charges against him. The prosecution alleged that Bencivengo took the $12,400 in exchange for influencing two school board members so that Ljuba could keep her lucrative health insurance brokerage with Hamilton School District. The charges carry a maximum of 20 years in jail each and a guilty verdict on any one could remove Bencivengo from office.

Ballarotto, in his closing argument, sought to poke holes in the prosecution’s case, which largely rests on the recordings made by Ljuba and her courtroom testimony. He said that after the FBI approached her last year about her dealings with previous employer Frank Cotroneo, she needed some way to get out of trouble.

“She was here, because when the FBI knocked on her door, she was smart enough, adroit enough, experienced enough to take the target off her back and put it on John’s,” he said.

Cotroneo plead guilty to bribing public officials in Toms River School District in 2010. The FBI approached Ljuba in June 2011 about the case, and she told the FBI about the first payment to Bencivengo, a $5,000 check for a “cherry bedroom set” written by Ljuba’s husband to the wife of the admitted middleman in the case, Rob Warney.

“That check was a hot potato, no one wanted their name on that check: Not Mrs. Ljuba not the mayor not Mr. Warney,” Assistant US Attorney Harvey Bartle said. “There probably isn’t another piece of evidence that would fit this (money laundering charge) more perfectly than the cherry bedroom set check.”

Toward the end of his argument, Ballarotto appealed to the juror’s sense of justice, and at one point paraphrased Winston Churchill.

“Justice is a jealous mistress she tugs at my arm every moment in this courtroom she doesn’t let me sleep much and frankly she gives me very little peace,” he said. “You know what she wants you know what justice demands you know what the evidence in this case demands a not guilty verdict.”

Aside from the high-minded language, the arguments also got into the specific parts of the charges against the mayor. They are extortion under color of official right, attempted extortion under color of official right, two violations of the travel act and one charge of money laundering.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the prosecution and defense reached opposite conclusions from the same evidence on those charges, even quoting from the same recordings to prove their points. Bartle

“He didn’t take that money as John Bencivengo, citizen. He took that money as John Bencivengo, Mayor, the CEO of Hamiton Township,” he said.

He also pointed to the money from Bencivengo’s settlement. That settlement, valued at $80,000, came from a federal lawsuit Bencivengo and his then-wife filed against a contractor who had promised to build them a house on the island of St. Martin’s. The prosecution showed that Bencivengo had received $32,000 from the settlement in August 2012, more than enough money to pay back Ljuba and settle his tax bills.

“The mayor never worried about paying this money back, because it was never a loan it was a bribe,” Bartle said.

Ballarotto continued to make Ljuba’s credibility an issue in the trial. He said she contradicted her previous statements to the FBI in court and also lied to them over the course of the investigation about her relationship with Joy Tozzi. Tozzi is the business administrator of Robbinsville Township. In addition, she said she told Joe and Cathy Tramontana about her cooperation with the FBI shortly after it began.

Joe Tramontana is the Business Administrator for Hamilton Township School District and Cathy Tramontana is the Department of Health and Recreation Director for Hamilton.

Ljuba did not tell the FBI about her friendship with Tozzi until March, and did not tell the FBI she had told the Tramontanas until she received her nonprosecution agreement in June. She also said she possessed recorders for as long as a week after a conversation and on at least one occasion decided not to record a conversation that she decided didn’t contain anything substantive.

“She a liar, she’s a manipulator, she’s a thief, she’s a con artist and she’s now vouching for the accuracy of the tapes,” he said. “The tapes are only as good as the integrity of the process in which the tapes are made.”

Chao though, said the evidence on those recordings would be enough to convict Bencivengo. Partially, he said, because Bencivengo never says the money was a loan, and never differentiates between the money and his actions on her behalf with Board President Patty Del Giudice and Board Member Stephanie Pratico.

“$7,400 is definitely doable as long as you’ve got my back with Pratico,” Ljuba said in one June 2011 recording.

“Mar, Mar I’m just saying when have I ever not had your back?” Bencivengo responded.

Chao said evidence of bribery, with conditions like that, cannot get any clearer.

“No one ever uses the word bribe when they’re actually bribing someone. You have to look at the conditions,” he said.

But Ballarotto pointed to the same quote from the June 2011 recording, in particular Bencivengo saying “when have I ever not had your back?” as evidence that Bencivengo did not see the exchange as money for his official action.

“The government tapes clearly demonstrate that it wasn’t a quid pro quo. It wasn’t’ a bribe. It wasn’t something for something,” he said.

Ballarotto also pointed to another tape which he said indicated Bencivengo thought of the money from Ljuba as a loan.

Chao said it did not make sense for Ljuba to be criminally manipulative, misleading and corrupt in all other portions of her professional life except her relationship with Bencivengo. He also said it did not make sense, after testifying to giving out tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and gifts to various public officials over several years, to then provide a loan without any strings attached for the mayor of Hamilton.

“It was her business to pay public officials in Hamilton and it was her business to keep them close to her and friendly,” he said. “There’s a very powerful incentive if you are a criminal with someone to be very good friends with them.”

You can check out live coverage of the deliberations and possible verdict today at hamiltoninfocus.blogspot.com